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Democrats have blocked budget legislation in the U.S. Senate, setting the stage for a federal government shutdown on Friday unless the Trump administration agrees to change how its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conduct their controversial crackdown.
The move comes as U.S. President Donald Trump faces growing public pressure to rein in ICE following the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal officers conducting immigration sweeps.
Among the Senate Democrats’ demands: that ICE agents remove their masks, wear identification and body cameras, cease roving patrols and follow similar use-of-force guidelines as local police.
With no deal on the reforms by midday Thursday, a funding package failed to receive enough votes to move forward in the Senate.
Just Asking wants to know:  Minneapolis has been a flashpoint for the immigration crackdown in the United States. What questions do you have about life in that city for the past few weeks? What would you ask organizers in Minneapolis?  Send us your questions ahead of our Jan. 30 show.Â
Failure to pass it would shut off the flow of money to a host of federal departments and programs starting Friday night, forcing what would be the second government shutdown in a matter of months.
The Senate vote finished mere minutes after Trump said he doesn’t want to see a shutdown happen and believes it can be avoided.
WATCH | Decoding the messages in ICE’s recruitment campaign:
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“The Democrats, I don’t believe want to see it either,” Trump said just before noon Thursday at the White House, during a televised portion of a cabinet meeting.
“We’re working on that right now. I think we’re getting close,” he said.
Talks to try to reach a deal to avert the shutdown intensified Wednesday night between the White House and Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, according to reports by the New York Times and CNN.
ICE is now best-funded law enforcement agency in U.S.
Although the Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate, they need at least a handful of Democrats onside to get the 60 votes required to move funding resolutions forward.
The package funds the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the rest of the fiscal year — including $770 million US for ICE detention and enforcement programs — but also includes the budgets for the departments of Defence, State, Transportation and Health and Human Services.
The two sides were discussing a possible deal to separate the DHS funding from the rest of the package, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
In Trump’s second term in the White House, the amount of public money allocated to ICE has rocketed, transforming it into the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the U.S., with a bigger budget than the FBI.
The Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill, passed by Congress in 2025, gave ICE a $75-billion US supplement to spend over four years atop its current annual budget of $10 billion US.
The official Trump sent this week to take over leadership of the Minnesota enforcement operation, border czar Tom Homan, told a news conference in Minneapolis on Thursday that he’ll only reduce the number of officers involved if state and local officials co-operate by handing over undocumented immigrants held in jails.